


Human Touch

by linguamortua



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: Blow Jobs, Established Relationship, Injury, Injury Recovery, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-17
Updated: 2019-08-17
Packaged: 2020-09-05 18:56:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20278180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linguamortua/pseuds/linguamortua
Summary: It was supposed to be temporary, but as any rational person knew, the human body was fallible and so were doctors.After a near miss in the field, Nate recuperates from an injury with Mike in the most enjoyable way possible.





	Human Touch

**Author's Note:**

> This is a very silly premise, but also I fully believe that Mike's dick has healing powers. What is the truth?

A surprisingly cold wind was blowing as Nate carefully stepped out of the cab, one arm stretched out in front of him. Almost immediately a hand caught it, and he heard Mike’s voice.

‘Easy, Nate.’

‘Mike.’ He couldn’t hide the relief in his voice, nor the way he found Mike’s forearm with his hand and clung, just a little. Then, the heavy, dull sound of his bag on the sidewalk, and the cab driver saying goodbye. Nate was still holding on to Mike’s hand. He let it go, and stooped to feel around for his bag.

‘I’ve got it.’

Nate stifled the flash of shame. It wasn’t a productive emotion. ‘Thanks.’

The sudden sensation of Mike’s hand between his shoulder blades made him jump. ‘You know the way,’ said Mike. As always, when Mike said something in that reassuring voice, Nate found himself believing it. He visualised the path up to the front stoop and tried to step with confidence. Mike kept his property as well-maintained as everything else in his life, so Nate knew that there were no cracks in the flagstones. Even so, every bump and irregularity felt like a chasm.

‘Am I—’ he began, feeling that he must almost be at the steps.

‘Nearly. Three more paces. Now stop.’ Mike’s hand found Nate’s right elbow and guided his hand to the rail. ‘Four steps up, then two paces to the door. There’s a mat.’ He was so matter of fact about it, and thank God, because Nate couldn’t handle any more sympathy right now. Mike navigated him to the sofa, and Nate flopped down and sat there for a few minutes, legs sprawled, exhausted. Remembering he was a guest in someone else’s house, he kicked his shoes off. Then, remembering it was Mike’s house, he swung his legs up onto the couch and closed his eyes. Mike had left him alone, which he appreciated; the breathing room, the quiet. But Nate could hear him moving through the house, there if Nate needed anything.

He knew this because he knew Mike.

Some time later—but not more than an hour, Nate reckoned—Mike returned with coffee and something that Nate’s nose immediately told him was a bacon sandwich. He pulled himself up to sitting.

‘Change from hospital food.’

‘Thanks,’ said Nate fervently. He held out his hand and Mike put the plate in it. With his other hand he mapped the contents of the plate. A thick sandwich, cut down the middle. The sofa dipped with Mike’s weight, and Nate heard the twin sounds of two mugs being set down on a table. Nate remembered the coffee table, vaguely. A crunch, as Mike bit into his own sandwich.

‘How did you—’

‘Balanced one on my forearm.’ Mike paused. ‘Waited tables for a while in high school.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Seriously. In a steakhouse.’

‘Tell me everything.’

Nate took a bite of his sandwich and listened to Mike talk. By the time the food hit his stomach, his hunger had appeared. A small hunger, but he’d not felt much but nausea and worry for a week. The bacon was salty and fatty in exactly the right way. The coffee, strong with two sugars. Despite the coffee, as Nate ate the last bite of his sandwich he suddenly felt enormously tired. He cracked a giant yawn.

‘Tired?’

‘Yeah. What time is it?’

‘Close enough to bedtime,’ Mike said. There was a clink of mug on plate. ‘Thought I’d set you up down here, pull out the bed.’ A thump, Mike’s hand on the arm of the couch.

‘I can get up the stairs.’

‘More worried about you coming back _down_ the stairs, Mike said dryly.

‘Thanks for the vote of confidence.’

‘I don’t want you to have to worry,’ Mike said. He said it quite slowly; more slowly than his usual drawl, even. Nate realised that it was Mike who was worried. 

‘It’s temporary,’ Nate blurted out, clutching at his coffee mug. Mike’s breath caught and held. Nate hesitated. It was supposed to be temporary, but as any rational person knew, the human body was fallible and so were doctors. 

'That's good,' Mike said. 

'It's not like I'll be blind forever,' Nate said. He was trying to imagine what expression Mike might be wearing. Without visual feedback his conversations all felt partially redacted. 'Just until the swelling goes down. Pressure on the optic nerve.'

'Okay,' said Mike gently. Nate felt himself blush. His throat ached. All the same he desperately wanted to get it out, to be very clear so that Mike knew there was nothing functionally wrong with him, and that Nate wasn't going to be useless, or a nuisance. 

'A matter of weeks at the most,' he managed, and then his throat was so tight that he had to stop. 

'Nate.' Mike's hand on his back, then. 

'It's fine.'

'Yeah.'

But it wasn't fine, and Nate found himself turning and burying his face in Mike's shoulder. His fingers found Mike's t-shirt, in loose folds at his waist. For a while he just breathed deeply. Mike's arm over his back was satisfyingly heavy. In hospital, everybody touched him but nobody hugged him. He'd held it together, because it was what you did. 

'Sorry,' he said eventually, disentangling himself. 

'God damn it, Nate,' Mike said in a tone of exasperated fondness. 

‘I don’t want to get in the way.’ Nate was surprised by how small his voice sounded.

‘You’re not.’

Nate’s nose was full of the smell of Mike, which was bringing back a raft of exciting and tender memories. To Nate’s horror, he realised that he was very close to getting hard and also to crying, and he wasn’t sure what action would precipitate which outcome. He pulled his feet up onto the couch and wrapped his arms around his knees, which would at least make the former less likely.

‘Could you,’ he asked, turning his face down towards his lap, ‘sleep down here too?’

‘That was the plan.’

‘It won’t be for long, anyway. As soon as my sister has her baby, my dad’s going to fly out.’

‘When’s she due?’

‘End of the week.’ It was Tuesday. 

‘Shit, here I thought it was a flying visit. But I got you for almost a week.’ Mike sounded pleased.

‘If you hadn’t let me crash here,’ Nate began. He would still have been in hospital. Or in a hotel somewhere, confined to his room. Or trying to fly solo, with a connection through Dallas. All three options had been so unbearable that he had cracked, and asked a nurse to find Mike’s number in his phone and call him. Right there, on the outskirts of town and, blessedly, free as a bird for the next month. ‘Anyway, I owe you.’

‘You’ll pay me back,’ said Mike, dropping his voice low. Then he was in Nate’s space, his breath warm on Nate’s neck. ‘I know you’re good for it.’

‘Oh my god,’ Nate said. ‘Do you know I was just in the hospital?’ He started laughing, adding a third terrible emotion to the maelstrom currently going on.

‘They say physical touch is healing.’

‘Do you really think they mean sex?’

‘I’m willing to do whatever it takes.’ Mike said it in tones of enormous dignity, and Nate couldn’t help but reach for him again. This time, Mike got him in a bear hug and Nate melted into it.

‘You know,’ said Nate after a few minutes. ‘I actually have a headache?’ He yawned again.

‘You should stop getting hit in the head with pieces of Humvee,’ said Mike serenely. All the same, he gently pulled away and stood up. ‘Gonna grab some sheets.’ He jogged up the stairs, and Nate listened to his feet making their creaking way across the floorboards upstairs. Then he came back down, and flung a pillow at Nate that landed in his lap. Something soft fluttered over his head. ‘Make yourself useful and put the pillowcase on.’

Surprisingly, Nate could figure it out. He sat on the coffee table and stuffed the pillow into its case while Mike creaked open the sofa bed and made it up. The curtain rings rattled on the rail as Mike closed them. He took the plates away. Nate found his way to the bed and sat on the edge, and then he fished for his kit bag and managed to locate a clean pair of boxers to sleep in. He found his toothbrush and deodorant.

‘Hey,’ he said suddenly, registering a change around him. ‘You turned the light off.’

‘Yeah,’ said Mike, sounding pleased. ‘You got that.’

‘There’s light and dark,’ said Nate. ‘It’s mostly just sort of a dark red, though.’ Honestly, he was trying not to think about it. To get his hopes up. As he brushed his teeth over the kitchen sink, Nate thought for the hundredth time about what life might be like if there was something permanently fucked up. Two doctors had told him he just had to be patient, and usually he’d accept the knowledge, the logic. He was a sensible guy. He believed in the expertise of medical professionals.

He was still scared.

He almost said it as he felt his way back down the hall to bed. Mike was so close and reassuring, and it almost slipped out. He was right there as Nate reached down to take his socks off, and then he was in Nate’s personal space, touching him. His hands on Nate’s hips.

'I can undress myself,' said Nate. 

Mike chuckled, and undid Nate's belt. 'I like unwrapping you.' He pulled the belt through the belt loops with a sibilant sound that made Nate shiver. 'Like a Christmas present.'

Nate let him. He couldn’t tell where Mike’s hands were going to go next, and so every touch came with a little jolt of excitement. Mike unbuttoning his jeans. Mike’s rough, warm fingertips suddenly under Nate’s jaw. Then the soft press of Mike’s mouth, tasting like coffee and familiar in its careful exploration. 

‘Oh, shit,’ he whispered against Mike’s cheek, and felt the rumble of Mike’s laughter. Mike rolled him down onto the bed, one arm holding around the waist. Without vision Nate had a weird feeling of vertigo as he went down. It went away as soon as Mike’s body settled into the mattress with him, half-over him, bracketing him in against the back of the couch.

With wandering hands, Nate explored the contours of Mike’s body. The swell of his collarbones, and the distinct line of each rib when Nate pressed down just a little with his fingertips. The groove down the inside of each elbow; touching Mike there made him twitch with ticklishness. For a while they just touched each other. Mike’s hands made their slow, sure way across Nate’s body, getting the last of his clothes off.

With a contented sigh, Mike shuffled down the sofa bed. There was the sound of his foot hitting the coffee table and a curse muffled in Nate’s hip. 

‘How’s the headache?’

‘I’ll live,’ said Nate, not caring so much that it hurt when Mike’s stubble was dragging along his inner thigh.

‘Let me know if you’re having a medical emergency,’ Mike said.

‘Right.’ Nate’s headache was there but unimportant. The doctors had told him not to over-exert himself, but they hadn’t specified what they meant. So Nate decided that he was probably okay to lie here with his eyes closed and let Mike touch him. 

_You’re okay_, he told himself, breathing deeply. _It’s Mike, you’re okay._

Mike lazily took Nate’s dick into his mouth and Nate, gradually getting hard, tried not to squirm with the sudden shock of pleasure. He had the hazy sense that it would be rude. Mike liked to take his time over this kind of thing and Nate tried to be content with letting him take the reins. He tried to lie back and enjoy it. His dick was really only half-cooperating. Patience, and time; Nate tried to deploy both. But five minutes of Mike’s careful attentions later, Nate was still restless.

‘Sorry,’ he said, reaching down to touch the prickle of Mike’s buzzcut. 

‘S’alright,’ Mike said indistinctly, mouth busy. His thumb was rhythmically stroking the top of Nate’s thigh.

‘I want to blow you,’ Nate said suddenly. 

‘Hell yeah,’ Mike said, and rolled over. Nate reached down and found the hard plane of his stomach. A little feeling around and he located Mike’s wrist.

‘No, like this.’ Nate grabbed Mike’s hands and tugged him over until his weight was on Nate. ‘Get up here.’

‘You sure you’re okay?’ Mike asked, following the pull of Nate’s hands upward until he was kneeling over Nate’s chest.

‘I’m okay,’ said Nate, bursting with impatience. The drumming pain in his head was receding, replaced by an equally distracting throb in his cock. He reached down and stroked himself a couple of times. ‘Come on.’ He bit the inside of his cheek to make the spit well up. 

Mike hesitated. Nate got his hands on the thick swell of Mike’s thighs, ran them up to his ass. 

‘I’ll do whatever you want, Nate,’ said Mike, and Nate braced himself for the ‘but’. ‘But I’m not doing anything that’s gonna hurt you.’

‘You _won’t_,’ said Nate, desperately frustrated. The stinging in his throat was back, and he caught his left thumb between his index and middle fingers and squeezed hard. He used to do it as a kid when he didn’t want to cry. 

‘Are you sure?’

‘I’m not a fucking doctor, Mike,’ said Nate through gritted teeth. ‘Did you want to call the hospital and check?’

Mike hummed in a dubious way, like he was listening to a particularly stupid order. But all the same he shifted his weight and leaned in. Every muscle in Nate’s body twitched to life, from his feet curling in anticipation to his neck, lifting a little to get closer to Mike’s cock.

‘Please,’ Nate half-whispered. Mike’s hand touched his chin; his knuckles, Nate thought. Then the warm, tentative bump of Mike’s cock against his lip. Nate kept his mouth half-closed so that Mike had to push in through a little resistance. So that Mike put his hand on the back of Nate’s head to hold him still. The feel of his big, warm hand cupping Nate’s skull made the tension that Nate had been carrying in his neck drain away. He knew he made a noise. Mike hesitated for the barest second and then pressed a little further in. The soft drag of his skin over Nate’s tongue; Nate shuddered and clung to the back of Mike’s thighs, where his hamstring curved in towards his knee.

Nate tipped his head back, the angle letting Mike's cock fill his mouth. Mike stifled a groan. His breathing was heavy and shaking. All Nate could smell and feel and hear was Mike. 

If his head still hurt a little, that was no big deal. And if not being able to see was disorienting, that didn't matter either; it was just like fucking in the dark with his eyes closed, Nate told himself. He urged his brain to switch off, tugging at Mike's thighs to make him go deeper. As always, Mike knew what he needed. He slowly fucked Nate’s mouth, getting all the way back to Nate’s throat bit by bit. Nate was so hard that he ached, and he could somehow feel it tingling in the back of his neck, in his teeth. 

The press of Mike’s cock against his throat made him swallow messily, loudly. For a moment he thought he’d lost the trick of it and then he remembered and relaxed. He distinctly felt the head of Mike’s cock breach his throat. Nate’s hips lifted off the bed. When he whimpered (pathetically, he thought vaguely, not really caring), his throat flexed around Mike, threatening to make him gag.

When Mike came, he was so far down Nate’s throat that Nate couldn’t feel it, couldn’t taste it. Mike’s rumbling groan was the only warning he had, and then the shudder of his body and the subtle tensing of his hand on Nate’s head. He pulled out carefully, let his cock rest on Nate’s tongue. With eager strokes Nate licked at it, tasting him, until Mike gave a breathless laugh and pulled away, ticklish.

Nate coughed wetly and then wiped his hand over his damp face. His eyes had been watering and running tear tracks down his temples. 

'I'm okay, Mike, I'm,' he said, very quickly and urgently. 

'I got you.' Mike's weight shifted and Nate held his breath, waiting, knowing what was about to happen; Mike’s hand on him, familiar. 

It only took a moment for Nate to come. Mike reached back to palm Nate’s cock, and Nate twisted and shuddered out a moan. His back arched with a pulsing, desperate tension that was almost painful. One foot was caught under the sheets and his right shoulder was sliding off the edge of the sofa bed. 

‘Jesus,’ he said in a whimper, shaking through the last of it under the solid weight of Mike’s thighs. Mike leaned in close until Nate could feel his breath, and he got an arm under Nate and hauled him back into the middle of the mattress.

Nate rolled comfortably onto his side, and Mike resettled himself against Nate’s back. There was the rustle of cotton, and Mike’s satisfied yawn. The heating in the house kicked in. Nate took it all in, pleasant sounds, everyday sounds. No hospital beeps and chatter.

‘All right, Nate?’ Mike said very quietly, his hand on Nate’s back right between his shoulderblades. Nate was going to tell him that he was good; better than good, great. But as soon as he closed his eyes, he fell asleep.

The next morning Nate woke to the sound of Mike whistling in the kitchen, and then the higher, more insistent whistling of a boiling kettle. He cracked his eyes open to a weird, pinkish-red haze. When he turned his face towards the window, the haze got a little brighter. He rubbed at his eyes. 

‘Don’t mess with ‘em,’ said Mike placidly. He kissed Nate’s forehead, and then his cheek a couple of times. ‘Coffee’s on the floor here, don’t kick it over.’

Nate heard the toaster pop in the kitchen. He found his meds in the side pocket of his bag: anti-inflammatories, antibiotics, painkillers. Lying there in a warm nest, Mike domestically puttering in the kitchen, Nate scanned his body from head to toe: _how do I feel_? Nothing wrong, except the remnants of the headache he’d had since the explosion had flung the Humvee door across his team’s corner of the camp and into his back, glancing the base of his skull. 

He ran his hand over it now, still somehow amazed that he couldn't feel anything there. All the damage internal, healing slowly but surely. He took his meds with coffee and arranged himself cross-legged against the back of the sofa, pulling the covers around him. 

'Now if you think I'm waiting on you hand and foot for the whole week,' said Mike, coming in and giving Nate a plate. 

'I'd be right?' Nate grinned towards the sound of Mike's voice. 

'Probably,' said Mike. He came to sit by Nate. 'Good to have you home,' he said casually. Nate's chest wanted to burst with sudden joy. 

'Good to be here,' he said instead, and they both knew what he meant—here, together, alive.


End file.
